Chaundra Knight is an Ohio licensed professional clinical counselor with a neuropsychotherapy certification and an EMDRIA certified therapist. She has years of specialized counseling experience in adult ADHD and autism assessment, evaluation, and evidence-based treatment of non-neurotypical clients. Her advanced credentials, trauma focus, neuropsychotherapy training, and lived AuDHD experiences, make her uniquely qualified to provide comprehensive mental health care for adults with a neurodivergent identity. Including helping with unmasking, and complex mental health issues such as trauma, PTSD, Anxiety, and dissociation.
Advanced Clinical Credentials & Professional Authority
Chaundra holds several state and national credentials proving extensive expertise across multiple areas of mental health:
- Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor (LPCC): Licensed in Ohio to provide counseling and assessment
- Licensed Clinical Addiction Counselor III (LCDCIII): Advanced licensing in addiction treatment and substance use disorders
- Certified Neuropsychotherapy (NPT-C®): Certified in neuropsychotherapy with training in brain-based approaches and neuroscience-informed clinical practice.
- EMDRIA Trained Therapist: Advanced training in EMDR from EMDRIA, the official governing body.
- Training in ADHD and Autism Assessment: Advanced training in the assessment and diagnosis of Autism Spectrum and ADHD including the psychometric testing required to do so.
This helps show Chaundra's expertise in trauma treatment, mental health counseling, ADHD, Autism Spectrum, and advanced Neuropsychotherapy. This allows clients to be confident in her ability to understand their issues correctly and know how to treat them. This is evidence-based treatment from a highly-trained professional therapist, not eclectic therapy.
Specialized Training in Neuropsychotherapy & Brain-Based Approaches
Chaundra completed her advanced neuropsychotherapy training through Bradley University's neuroscience-informed counseling program. This degree program integrates current neuroscience research with clinical mental health instruction. This specialized education provides the base for her approach to treating ADHD, autism, and other mental health challenges. She not only understand the behaviors and signs, but deeply undersands the biology of how non-neurotypical brains process information, regulate emotion, manage attention, and respond to stress.
Her neuropsychotherapy expertise enables her to:
- Understand neurodivergent brains as a natural variation not a problem, deficit or pathology
- Recognize how chronic masking, invalidation, environmental issues, and repeated misunderstandings of a client create real brain and body stress responses
- Create treatment plans based on how non-neurotypical brains actually work instead of forcing clients into neurotypical frameworks
- Integrate evidence-based therapy approaches; including EMDR, somatic therapy, polyvagal-informed nervous system work, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and neuroaffirming practices
Core Clinical Specialization: Adult ADHD & Autism Assessment & Evaluation
Chaundra's primary clinical focus is comprehensive assessment, diagnostic evaluation and treatment, for adults with suspected or confirmed ADHD and autism. Her resting approach is grounded in her education, partnering with the client, lived-experience, and recognition that adult neurodivergence often presents differently than childhood ADHD and ASD.
Her assessment services are particularly valuable for adults who have:
- Masked or Camouflaged for years: You have spent years adapting, people-pleasing, or performing neurotypical behaviors to fit in, keep jobs, or even for your own safety.
- Been Misdiagnosed: It is our experience that many clients have received alternative diagnoses (anxiety, depression, personality disorders) that missed underlying neurodivergence. This is often due to lack of training in the therapy community to spot/diagnose ADHD and Autism.
- Gone Undiagnosed into Adulthood: You have recently recognized your own neurodivergent traits and been unable to find professional screening. Or you have received late-life diagnosis. This is different from working with a client who has had support for their non-neurotypical brain and nervous system since childhood.
- Experienced Diagnostic Gaps: You may belong to a population historically missed by westernized diagnostic process (BIPOC individuals, those assigned female at birth, LGBTQIA+ individuals, gender-expansive people). Or you may have been mistakenly labeled as neurodivergent because your behaviors and thought processes are appropriate to your own culture instead of western culture.
Chaundra's assessment methodology emphasizes:
Collaborative & Transparent Process: Your lived experience and self-knowledge guide the evaluation. Assessment results are explained clearly with practical tips.
Neurodivergent-Centered Approach: ADHD and autism present across a spectrum. They differ significantly between individuals, and are shaped by individual traits such as culture, gender identity, sexual orientation, and life context.
Lived-Experience Foundation: Assessment focuses on your actual experiences, challenges, strengths, and how you adapt rather than relying completely on standardized checklists or childhood history.
Cultural Humility: Attention to how identity factors into diagnosis. This includes things like race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, and cultural background. All of these influence now non-neurotypicals present and how diagnosis should be handled.
Strength-Based Framework: Assessment identifies BOTH challenges and inherent strengths, capabilities, and coping strategies you've developed.
Neuroaffirming Treatment for ADHD & Autism
Beyond assessment, Chaundra provides specialized counseling for neurodivergent adults addressing:
Autistic Burnout & Chronic Masking Recovery: You may be exhausted by years of masking, adapting, and people-pleasing. Treatment focuses on safely unmasking, nervous system recovery, reconnection with authentic self. Treatment also focuses on creating a life that is manageable and meets neurodivergent needs.
ADHD-Related Challenges: Specialized therapy for rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD), emotional dysregulation, ADHD-related anxiety, and executive function overwhelm. These, as well as the compounded stress of navigating a world designed for neurotypical executive functioning can leave you feeling helpless or overwhelmed.
Identity Integration & Late Diagnosis Adjustment: Support tailored to your needs to address the emotional and identity impact of ADHD or autism diagnosis in adulthood. This includes the integration of neurodivergent identity, and at times processing grief for the years you were undiagnosed or misdiagnosed.
Internalized Shame & Negative Core Beliefs: Specific treatment to address deeply held beliefs such as "I'm broken," "I'm fundamentally flawed," "I'm not good enough," "I don't belong," or "I have to hide who I am". These are common after a lifetime of masking, invalidation, and misunderstanding.
Nervous System Dysregulation & Emotional Overwhelm: I use polyvagal-informed nervous system education, somatic awareness, grounding and regulation strategies, and body-based approaches to help cope with these issues. All coping skills are tailored to how non-neurotypical brains and bodies work.
Anxiety & Sensory Overwhelm: Therapeutic work addressing other issues caused by years of living with neurodivergence in a world that is not neurodivergent friendly. This can lead to symptoms such as anxiety, panic, chronic stress, social anxiety, performance anxiety, and sensory overwhelm. Neurodivergent nervous systems process threat and sensory input differently and may not respond to traditional therapy methods.
EMDR Trauma Therapy Adapted for Neurodivergent Nervous Systems
Chaundra is trained in and specializes in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), an evidence-based treatment for trauma that she has adapted for autistic and ADHD individuals. Traditional EMDR approaches frequently overlook sensory processing differences, dissociation patterns, communication preferences, and the ways neurodivergent nervous systems experience and process trauma.
Her neuroaffirming EMDR practice addresses:
- Relational Trauma & Attachment Wounds: Treatment for wounds from invalidation, misunderstanding, rejection, and relational harm
- Autistic Burnout & Masking-Related Trauma: Support for the trauma of years spent masking and adapting
- Sensory Trauma & Overwhelming Experiences: Treatment for sensory overload, sensory trauma, and nervous system dysregulation
- Military Trauma & Service-Related PTSD: Specialized support for service members, veterans, and military families
- Medical & Religious Trauma: Treatment for medical trauma, religious trauma, and other specific trauma types
- Trauma Following Late Diagnosis: Processing for the emotional upset and grief that can follow late ADHD or autism diagnosis that has come too late to help with school, college, and other major life stages
Her adapted EMDR approach incorporates bilateral stimulation with bodily awareness, grounding strategies, parts based interventions, polyvagal nervous system education, and resource development. All treatment is paced and modified to your sensory needs, dissociation responses, and processing capacity.
Lived Neurodivergent Experience & Clinical Credibility
Chaundra herself is on the autism spectrum and ADHD. Her personal neurodivergent identity and experience informs her clinical work and provides genuine understanding and empathy. Her own experience navigating a world not designed for her AuDHD mind and body, is combined with her advanced clinical training. This allows her to meet clients where they are with both professional expertise and in-depth understanding of what they're experiencing.
As she states: "My own experience as a neurodivergent person taught me what it feels like to move through environments designed for neurotypical brains, to wonder why things felt harder, and to eventually understand that my brain works differently. Not worse, just different. My lived experience, combined with my clinical training, allows me to connect with clients from a place of genuine understanding."
Military Background & Service-Related Trauma Expertise
Chaundra brings her personal military background. This gives her a firsthand understanding of military culture, service-related stress, trauma, and PTSD. Including complex PTSD. Her warrior experience informs her therapy work with service members, veterans, and military families navigating the intersection of military trauma and neurodivergence.
Cultural Humility & Inclusive Practice
Chaundra identifies as Indigenous (Blackfoot with Siksika nation heritage). Her cultural identity and lived experience ground her clinical approach in cultural respect. They help her understand how culture, family, relationships, and lived experience shape identity, mental health, and healing.
This cultural grounding is reflected in her particular attention to historically underserved and misdiagnosed populations:
- BIPOC individuals whose neurodivergence has been missed or minimized
- Individuals assigned female at birth (AFAB) whose presentations don't match male-centered diagnostic criteria
- LGBTQIA+ and gender-expansive individuals navigating multiple layers of identity
- Clients from marginalized communities where mental health stigma and limited access to specialized care compound mental health challenges
Clinical Philosophy: Neuroaffirming, Trauma-Informed, Strength-Based
Chaundra's clinical approach is grounded in the following core principles:
Neurodivergence as Natural Variation: ADHD and autism are neurological differences. They are natural variations of human neurology, not disorders requiring "fixing" or correction. Therapy focuses on understanding how your brain works, and working with it, not changing it.
Nervous System Safety as Healing Foundation: Healing is not only about changing thoughts or behaviors. In order to begin the process, your nervous system must experience genuine safety. Treatment incorporates nervous system regulation, somatic awareness, and polyvagal-informed approaches to support this feeling of safety.
Collaborative Partnership: You are the expert on your own life and experiences. Chaundra serves as clinical guide. She provides expertise, insight, and support while honoring your authority over your own healing.
Strength-Based Framework: Treatment does not focus on deficits or what's "wrong". After all, neurodiversity is just that, diversity. Not wrong, not bad, not a problem to be "fixed". Treatment highlights your own strengths and your ability to adapt, and builds from that foundations.
Trauma-Informed Lens: Chronic invalidation, environment mismatch, and repeated experiences of being misunderstood cause real emotional wounds that deserve compassion and clinical care. Not another label that you "should" be different in order to be normal or even loved.
Services Provided
Adult ADHD & Autism Assessment: Complete diagnostic assessment for adults exploring or confirming ADHD and Autism. Attention is given to masking and historically underdiagnosed populations
Neuroaffirming Counseling: Specialized treatment for the challenges of ADHD and autism without the assumption that you should act "normal". This includes burnout, masking, anxiety, emotional dysregulation, identity work, and nervous system support
EMDR Trauma Therapy: Evidence-based trauma treatment adapted for Autistic and ADHD nervous systems
Nervous System Regulation & Somatic Therapy: Polyvagal-informed therapeutic support using somatic awareness, grounding strategies, and emotional regulation skills
Parts-Informed & Internal Family Systems (IFS) Work: Treatment for internal conflict, protective mechanisms, and integrated self-understanding. The goal isn't to change you. It's to help you become more of who you truly are
Military Trauma & Service-Related PTSD: Specialized support for service members, veterans, and military families
Sessions are available in-person in Laurel and Columbus, Ohio, and virtually for adults throughout Ohio.
Chaundra L. Knight brings clinical expertise, advanced neuropsychotherapy training, advanced ADHD and Autism Spectrum training, lived neurodivergent and military experience, cultural humility, and genuine commitment to neuroaffirming mental health care. She provides the specialized ADHD and autism assessment, treatment, and support that adults deserve.
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